Homeowners in Essex are being offered up to £1,000 a month to look after NHS patients in their spare rooms as part of an Airbnb-style pilot scheme aimed to free up hospital beds.

CareRooms is working with trusts and councils to provide patients without a family of their own with somewhere to recover after they have had a minor procedure - such as a knee operation.

The trusts include Southend University Hospital Foundation Trust, Southend and Castlepoint, Rayleigh and Rochford clinical commissioning groups, Essex County Council and Southend Borough Council.

In return for fees of up to £1,000 a month, the hosts are asked to ‘welcome the patient, cook three microwave meals a day, and offer conversation,’ the Health Service Journal (HSJ) has discovered.

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CareRooms is only operating in Essex at the moment but is keen to roll out the system nationwide.

It says the model provides ‘a safe, comfortable place for people to recuperate from hospital’ as well as helping alleviate bed-blocking which has risen by 40 per cent in the past year and is estimated to cause up to 8,000 deaths annually.

Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow

A statement from Carerooms, which does not require any previous care experience, said: “Carerooms have invested in training and technology to help you and your local community and the NHS.

"Our hospitals are becoming increasingly full with patients who have nowhere to go, your spare room and bathroom can be safely converted to allow patients to be discharged for maximum of two weeks, for remote carers to look after them and for minimal impact and risk to your daily life.”

However it has come under attack from healthcare professionals and campaigners

Health campaigner Andy Abbott, who has campaigned over services in mid Essex said: “It really raises there a lot of concerns of the sort of care that people will be receiving at a very vulnerable time.

“It is very worrying news

“We are doing the NHS on the cheap, we keep bringing in more and more private companies to run the NHS and it really isn’t good enough.”

Harry Thirkettle, a part-time emergency registrar in Essex, told the HSJ: “Everyone’s immediate concern is, understandably, safeguarding. We are working hard to be better than standard practice.

“We are not going off half-cocked … We are not going to start taking on patients until we have satisfied all these different organisations’ governance procedures and committees [NHS providers, commissioners and councils].

"We are really carefully considering this and making sure it is as safe as possible.”

Southend Hospital managing director Yvonne Blücher said CareRooms was one of several “innovative solutions” being explored in Essex.

“The CareRooms principle is to provide additional support to those patients who may have had a minor procedure and live alone or whose own families are not able to provide short term assistance post hospital care,” she said.